AACSB Pulse: Business Schools, Rankings, and the Media

Host Eileen McAuliffe, AACSB's executive vice president, chief thought leadership officer, and managing director of EMEA, sits down with Phil Baty, chief global affairs officer at Times Higher Education, while at the World Academic Summit in Saudi Arabia. The two discuss Times Higher Ed’s rankings and their influence, and how to best convey an institution’s purpose and impact to the public. They examine the following three big questions:

1. The THE World University Rankings were first launched over 20 years ago. What are the origins of those rankings, and how did they grew to be what they are today?
2. Rankings can be a contentious issue among higher ed institutions—particularly those that aren’t often represented in the top numbers. How well do rankings reflect the excellence of a university?
3. Since much of the media narrative around higher education is about cost and return on investment, how can business schools leverage their expertise in measuring value to reshape this conversation in the public sphere?

Transcript

[00:00] Introduction: Welcome to AACSB Pulse, the podcast that tackles critical topics in global business education today, three questions at a time. We talk with deans, industry leaders, and other big thinkers about the trends reshaping education, leadership, and the future of work. AACSB Pulse brings these topics and more into sharp focus. AACSB Pulse: Three big questions. Bold answers. Better business schools.

[00:29] Eileen McAuliffe: Welcome to AACSB Pulse. It’s my pleasure to welcome our guest, Phil Baty. Phil is the chief global affairs officer at Times Higher Education. He developed the Times Higher Education World Rankings and created the World Academic Summit, where we happen to be at the moment here in glorious Saudi Arabia.

Thank you for speaking with me today, Phil. I know you’re incredibly busy in the middle of one of your biggest conferences, so thank you for sparing the time.

[00:56] Phil Baty: It’s a pleasure. Very happy to join you for this exciting conversation.

Question 1

[01:01] Eileen McAuliffe: Let’s jump into our three big questions. Now, I have grown up in academia, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a boss that hasn’t said to me, oh, the World University Rankings are out. What do you think? Or, oh, what’s happened? You know, so the World University Rankings were first launched 20 years ago. Over 20 years ago, I think. So could you talk a little bit about the origins of those rankings and how they grew to be the phenomenal force in higher education that they are today?

[01:31] Phil Baty: I mean, it’s interesting, actually. The origins are very obscure, really. There was a little-noticed clause in a big report for the Treasury, I think it was 2003. Richard Lambert, who was editor of the FT, he did a report for the U.K. Treasury about university-industry collaboration. And actually, no one really noticed. There was a clause in this report that said there probably should be a global ranking because it was all about understanding the U.K.’s research power and the U.K.’s research competitiveness. It was a recognition that research is a driver of economic growth and an important part of the innovation economy and the geopolitics of knowledge.

And Lambert said, you know, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial—the big research powerhouses of the U.K.—don’t tend to compare themselves or don't know how to compare themselves with, whether it’s Tsinghua or NUS Singapore or Harvard or Stanford.

[02:29] Phil Baty: So he recommended that this ranking should be set up. And actually, he was very overt in saying it was a policy tool—it was for politicians to see the success of research funding policy, and it was for university leaders to understand their own strategy. So it wasn’t really conceived as a consumer tool at that time. And the Times Higher version that we built in 2004 was actually really about research. It was bibliometric analysis, research reputation … quite simplistic metrics at the time.

But I think we noticed that once it was out there, the hunger, it coincided with the real explosion of international student mobility, a real opening up of higher education, the massification of higher education. So it hit at a moment in time where it just became this massive phenomenon very quickly.

[03:14] Phil Baty: And we suddenly found ourselves being invited all over the world to talk about it, to be held account for it, to explain the methodology. And then lo and behold, you know, the Times Higher Education business really was transformed by this because we became—we were a U.K. publication really about U.K. policy, U.K. higher ed—became a massive global phenomenon and a global audience. And the rest is history, so to speak.

[03:36] Eileen McAuliffe: AACSB and in particular myself, I’m chief thought leadership officer and I’m leading something called the Global Research Impact Task Force at the moment, which is a group of AACSB plus nine other academies, the academic societies. One thing that keeps coming up is the devil of the rankings and their motivation and this competitive marketplace that it’s created.

But from what you’ve said, actually, it was serving the purpose of impact, really. It was trying to bridge the gap between the research that was being produced and what was needed. And it was the original motivation, then, going back seems to have been around impact, if you think about it.

[04:18] Phil Baty: Yeah, and it was very benign. It was really a way of understanding how important universities were to the national and global economy, how they were producing new knowledge, how they were creating new discoveries. Eventually we built metrics around how that translates into intellectual property. We look at the research that’s cited in patent applications, we look at industry funding. So we do look very clearly at how university research translates into the “real world,” how it translates into society and the economy.

But yeah, it was very benign. It was meant to be a way of understanding, it was meant to be a way of holding a mirror up to the sector, really helpful strategic KPIs for university leaders. I think where it became frustrating in the way that you explain is when it was a massive driver of student recruitment.

[05:07] Phil Baty: So if you’re in a recruiting market, a recruiting institution—obviously business schools—recruitment is a really big business. International students are a very big business in the U.K., in Australia, and key parts of the world. You know, it was a sort of quasi-academic exercise to help people understand, and then the stakes became super high because it was really influencing student behavior and then ultimately national pride and inward investment, etc.

[05:33] Eileen McAuliffe: When you’re a dean of a business school, and your institution rises or falls in the rankings, you’re either summoned in for a telling off or congratulated with a cake and a cup of tea. But in practical terms, if you were an institution, as I was at Coventry for a number of years, which had heavy international reach and exposure, the rankings were the only game in town. They really were.

In terms of where we are now with methodology, what market signals do you think you’re reading that might determine or require a change in the methodology of the way the rankings are constructed today?

[06:16] Phil Baty: Well, the original ranking, as I say, was really about research institutions, global research powerhouses, how they compare with, you know, it was literally how does Harvard compare with Cambridge and Oxford and increasingly then that included the East Asian rising powers, etc. And I think the core ranking has sort of kept the basic principle that it’s about globally focused, research-intensive institutions, and the methodology reflects that.

The problems I think that you’ve alluded to is that when the stakes are so high, the enthusiasm for gaming becomes really strong. And also that sense of national pride that people say, we want a world-class university, we want a world-ranked university.

[06:56] Phil Baty: Now, in many cases, it’s absolutely appropriate that developing countries say, we need to compete at the top level, we need to retain more talent, we need to attract talent, we need to attract the right partnership. So the traditional rankings really mean something and really matter. And we’ve seen what I call a global leveling up. There’s a surge of entries from the Middle East, from Southeast Asia, from Southern Asia in particular. I think that’s entirely appropriate. But when it becomes inappropriate is this idea that every university thinks it has to look as much like Harvard as possible.

[07:27] Phil Baty: If the best university in the world is Oxford or Harvard, you think, we just need to look as much like them as possible, and we need to play a research game. And if you’re regional, do you really need to always publish in an English-language global journal? Would you be doing research that’s much more relevant to your community? If your remit is more teaching, getting people into strong positions in the labor market, do you really need to be chasing prestige metrics? So from Times Higher’s perspective, I think what we’re saying is the world rankings will remain as a really important barometer of global research excellence. And we see it as more and more inclusive, and it is showing shifting tides.

When it becomes inappropriate is this idea that every university thinks it has to look as much like Harvard as possible.

But we do think we need to think much more clearly around, there’s no one model of excellence. The world rankings idealizes basically a North American ideal, a postwar North American ideal of a research intensive university where the teaching is brilliant but it’s immersive in the research environment.

[08:20] Phil Baty: We do recognize if you’ve not got the resources of Harvard, if you don’t happen to have very large endowments and extraordinary income, you’ve got a different mission. So we need to think different metrics for different missions.

The big switch for me was really around, we want to get a better handle on social and economic impact. And, of course, the big research powerhouses have great social and economic impact. But there are other types of impact, as I say, getting people into jobs, training people into their first careers, tackling research problems that are more specifically relevant to community.

We actually have an impact rating system that looks at the Sustainable Development Goals in particular and you can choose any one of the 17 goals to contribute to.

[09:02] Phil Baty: So if you’re a coastal institution—actually here in KAUST, we’re sitting on the Red Sea, they’ve got amazing work in marine biology and coral reef protection, and we’ve got a ranking that now says, actually, one of the SDGs is about life underwater.

[09:16] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[09:16] Phil Baty: You can show you’re great at certain niche activities. And it’s not just research in oceanography or food security or poverty. It’s actually things like social mobility; there’s an equalities element in the SDGs, there’s a gender equality SDG, there’s a decent work SDG, economic growth.

There’s no one-size-fits-all. There’s no single model of excellence. We should provide the data that helps a university hold a mirror up to itself and recognize that there are different types of excellence and different ways of measuring that excellence.

[09:33] Eileen McAuliffe: Sure.

[09:33] Phil Baty: So we’re now reframing rankings towards your own mission, your own requirements. So there’s no one-size-fits-all. There’s no single model of excellence. We should provide the data that helps a university hold a mirror up to itself and recognize that there are different types of excellence and different ways of measuring that excellence.

[09:50] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah. And that speaks to AACSB’s mission- and vision-based, principles-based accreditation standards. The schools that do very well in their peer review visits are those that are, they put their heart and soul into Standard 9, which is societal impact. Basically, this is what I’m about. This is my place in my community, this drives my research, and this is the societal impact. And research is only part of that.

Question 2

[10:15] Eileen McAuliffe: Digging into the kind of rankings a bit more, I want to just explore this impact really. Rankings can be very contentious amongst higher ed institutions—particularly those that aren’t often represented in the sort of top half, if you like, or the top third, but are still doing great work.

[10:34] Eileen McAuliffe: But the ones that tend to be in the top third are the ones that do have tremendous resource to be able to do everything, you know, they play the game very well.

But the ones that aren’t but are still heavy on societal impact in, you know, they’ve got a very defined mission, it’s, let’s say, a very regional contribution or something like that. How well do you think those rankings reflect the excellence of those types of university? And where do we see that? Because on a global stage, it’s a bit invisible, isn’t it really, to see those.

[11:00] Phil Baty: Yeah, I mean, look, what’s exciting about the traditional world rankings is we are seeing actually a greater diversity. It was the early stages, it was almost entirely North America, U.K., Western Europe dominating everything. We have seen some really exciting changes, particularly China Mainland’s rising, Hong Kong’s rising, South Korea, Southeast Asian nations really strengthening, central Asian institutions joining the research community.

So the traditional rankings are showing change and difference. But you’re right, it’s still judging institutions that happen to have a global remit, they happen to have a significant chunk of research intensity. And I think you’re absolutely right. We want to say, as Times Higher Education, that excellence comes in many forms and excellence can be excellence against your own mission.

[11:51] Phil Baty: And if your own mission, for example, is teaching led, without a major research budget, not producing any Nobel prizes, we might be doing some great research projects with SMEs or consultancy-type work, but we’re not going to be doing blue-skies thinking or nuclear physics, or we don’t have a particle smasher in the backyard. We completely accept that excellence happens in those institutions, and how do we define that?

So I think that’s why I think the framework we’ve created around impact, with what we call the Sustainability Impact Ratings, it allows you to really drill down into what you care about. Now some universities submit to every one of the 17 [Sustainable Development] Goals. So our theory of change, there, is actually, how do universities contribute to sustainable development?

[12:38] Phil Baty: So research and teaching are vital, but we also look at stewardship, so, how you manage your own affairs. So, your people is probably the primary one, so inequalities, we look at the proportion of female leaders and proportion of female intake as well as other equality measures. And then the other one is outreach—how do you work with communities, with businesses, with NGOs, with governments? And that can be absolutely on the local level.

[13:03] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[13:04] Phil Baty: Are you transferring technology? And I think within that framework—because we’re not putting prestige in there, we’re not putting research volume in there, we’re not putting the kind of, you know, publishing in the prestige journals in there—it does allow difference to be recognized.

And I think the exciting thing is, it was, what you see is the top 10 of the world rankings is still 100 percent U.S., U.K., and has been since the beginning. And then the top 10 of our impact work, when you look at the overall ranking, there’s a much more diverse mix. And if you look at the individual SDGs, we’ve had African universities at the top, we’ve had Malaysian universities at the top, we’ve had Australian universities. So I think the principle is very similar. We just want to recognize excellence on its own terms against the university’s own mission.

What you see is the top 10 of the world rankings is still 100 percent U.S., U.K., and has been since the beginning. And then the top 10 of our impact work, when you look at the overall ranking, there’s a much more diverse mix.

[13:51] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah, great. So how do you think the rankings and the metrics that form the rankings, how do you think they’re needing to change in the future based on where we are at the moment with the current level of disruption that the sector is undergoing?

[14:08] Phil Baty: I mean, there’s two elements for me. One is actually, there’s a bit of, I think, an emerging crisis in scientific publishing, or all academic publishing, because we’ve got an issue of an explosion of publication output, which should be good because it’s raising the tide for everyone.

There’s an explosion of discovery, but I think within that there’s an explosion of spurious research and fraudulent research. So the gaming of that research arena is bad. You’ve got citation cartels where people club together, will cite each other, you’ve got predatory journals, you’ve got AI now churning out volume, you’ve got publishers who want to publish more and more for profit, and then they’re actually being less and less strict on quality.

[14:54] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah, and it’s really interesting that you raise this particular area because part of our research in the Global Research Impact project was undertaken at the Academy of Management Conference in Copenhagen in July. And we had a series of roundtables, and one of those roundtables was with journal editors on all the main journals. And we got them talking, and one guy said, he said, yeah, well, you know, people don’t read our journals, you know, practice and policymakers don’t read our journals because the language is too complicated. Another guy turned around and said, more complicated, the better, though, isn’t it?

Because we talk to each other, so it’s not outward-facing, it’s not easily translatable. So I think, you know, where you’re moving there is very interesting.

[15:35] Phil Baty: So I think there’s an issue around, how do we actually measure good science? And obviously citations are important, and I think the bibliometric record is still very important because it’s underpinned by really important principles of peer review.

But peer review itself is becoming challenged around stretched time. People have barely got the time to do it. You know, there’s AI producing papers and then AI reviewing papers, and no one will be reading them. So there’s a real mess in scientific publishing we need to think about. And rankings need to think about how they disincentivize manipulative, weird behavior. It’s not just rankings, it’s grant awards and career development need to think about that.

There’s a real mess in scientific publishing we need to think about. And rankings need to think about how they disincentivize manipulative, weird behavior.

[16:06] Eileen McAuliffe: I agree with you. I don’t think it’s to disrespect anything around the scientific discovery or the phenomenological pieces of work that are ongoing. There’s some really strong evidence to suggest that is valuable. But when we talk specifically about business school research, it’s particularly challenged at the moment from funding bodies, from the national governments, because business schools don’t have the same link to practice, say, as medicine, engineering, or health, where they can see the translation actually creating impact and innovation. We don’t see that so clearly.

What do you think the future is of business school research in terms of the notion of impact?

[16:50] Phil Baty: I mean, I think research in general, actually, I do think we need to fundamentally rethink how excellence is looked at. And there is a lot of work around alternative metrics and things like, you know, it’s very difficult to pin stuff down, but even things like social media, policy relevance—I think for me it always goes down to purpose.

We’ve had 60-odd university presidents here this weekend in the World Academic Summit and a lot of them think from prestige to purpose, you really need to just worry less about your procedure and think about why you matter. Because there’s a crisis of societal confidence in a lot of institutions.

[17:27] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah.

[17:27] Phil Baty: So I think, how do we show that universities actually make a difference to the world? How do we show that research is translated into real-world thinking? And I think in the business school arena, it is around different channels of output. How do we get that output into a boardroom? How do we actually demonstrate it’s changing practices, it’s improving the business world?

Obviously, I think there’s been some excellent work that you’ve been involved in and that business schools in general have looked at, around, you know, what does a healthy economy look like, and how do we contribute well to society? You know, I’ve had people telling me that they’re slightly ashamed of certain business school graduates because they’ve gone into the world and not, you know, not done good for society.

How do we show that universities actually make a difference to the world? How do we show that research is translated into real-world thinking? And I think in the business school arena, it is around different channels of output. How do we get that output into a boardroom?

[18:11] Phil Baty: They’ve caused all sorts of, you know, negative disruption, and that’s not what we want to be. We want to create purposeful citizens who are going to be responsible, sustainable business leaders. The metrics are so tricky, and I think that’s why rankings often default to quite easy metrics.

But I think, how do we get the sense of purpose? How do we get a sense of impact? In Times Higher’s case, we’ve got a good framework for doing it, but we still don’t quite get to the arena of, what difference does this research make? And you look at systems like the U.K., the Research Excellence Framework, they spent about 250 million pounds, I think, with impact case studies and written reports explaining impact reviewed at a huge expense.

[18:56] Phil Baty: So I don’t think we can do that across the 136 countries that Times Higher works with, but we can, I think, start looking at data and particularly using AI to sort of link outputs and impacts on the ground with the original research. There’s some proxies like citations and patents, which I’ve mentioned, which we do use, but there might be proxies like research referenced in mainstream media, research mentioned in boardroom reporting. It’s an important topic that a lot of people are thinking hard about, but it does need to change.

[19:26] Eileen McAuliffe: It really is. I mean, I've been working on this project for the last year, and the number of different avenues that have connected with me on this is really quite incredible.

Let’s flip it to the student perspective, and how do you think students value rankings? I’m a mother of three sons that have pored over rankings over the years, looking at where to go and what to do, and they’ve listened to friends and advisors and so on. But from a student perspective, do you think they still have the same currency in selecting where they’re going to go, the course they’re going to study, and the outcomes they can expect?

[20:08] Phil Baty: It goes back again to the same theme of purpose, really. The reason why the world rankings from Times Higher have been so powerful is really on international students. If you’re a mother from China and you’ve got one child and you’ve saved up your life savings to send them west to one of the greatest universities, and it’s going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, you do tend to look at the big prestige rankings and say, I want my son at Harvard or Stanford or wherever it may be, MIT.

So the prestige element of the traditional world rankings—even though they were designed to show research excellence and the geopolitics of knowledge and what have you—they signal global recognition and global prestige and the name on your certificate as a passport for life and etc.

[20:55] Phil Baty: So I think they have currency there, but I would say, absolutely, as a student, maybe use them as a starting point. Use them as a way of gauging that general recognition. And we do have lots of student-relevant metrics, you know, we have those industry links, etc., that the faculty are at the forefront of discovery, their faculty are going to be great.

But the rankings should only be a real starting point for the student journey, and I think that’s where the business school rankings have probably become a bit cynical in the sense that, particularly if you’re looking at an MBA, all I really care about is, where do the graduates go, and what salaries do they get.

The rankings should only be a real starting point for the student journey.

[21:30] Eileen McAuliffe: Exactly. It’s that return on investment, isn’t it?

[21:32] Phil Baty: For those super utilitarian about ROI.

[21:35] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[21:35] Phil Baty: And we don’t go there with our rankings, but I understand that the consumer, of course, wants that intelligence of ROI, which I think, worryingly, can be a bit too utilitarian. But they also want things like the student satisfaction scores. There was a great comment, I think, by Mary Beard, the classicist from Cambridge, who did a piece about—in the U.K., student satisfaction is an annual survey—It’s not our job to satisfy our students, it’s our job to frustrate our students and challenge our students. Some of the courses that you hated the most 10 years on are the ones that you remember the most, that were most impactful.

And then obviously with salaries as well, do we want to value just “the bigger the salary, the better the job,” or the more, you know, the meaningfulness, the purposefulness.

[22:20] Phil Baty: Do we devalue jobs in public service? Devalue jobs in charities, NGOs, are we accidentally creating perverse incentives that skew people’s priorities? Sorry, to go back to the student point: rankings, brilliant starting point. Data, fantastically helpful, but disaggregated. Pull it apart, look at what it actually says. What is this based on?

[22:38] Eileen McAuliffe: Yes.

[22:39] Phil Baty: And make sure if it’s based on things you care about, you find the ones you care about. So, you know, that’s where I think the impact ranking comes in. You might say it’s top hundred in the world, but does it care about the environment? Is it close to its local economies?

Are we accidentally creating perverse incentives that skew people’s priorities?

[22:52] Eileen McAuliffe: That’s right. And from a student perspective, there’s so much research out there now. I mean, if you looked at the, which I’m sure you have, the World Economic Forum employability [report] that was published in January 2025, the shift in student mindset away from economic utility to purpose-driven, they want to be creative, they want to contribute, these graduates. So I think you’re absolutely talking to the right direction.

Question 3

[23:19] Eileen McAuliffe: So, Phil, let’s move on to the last of our big three questions here. So I want to talk about higher education and the media—and you are a media man—and particularly the role that business schools might play in that setting of media. Because we are, quite often, business schools in a university setting are the glue around quite a lot of the other faculties and the other disciplines. They’re the bridge.

[23:42] Eileen McAuliffe: Since much of the media narrative around higher education is about cost and return on investment, and as you alluded to, there’s a sense of lack of trust or confidence in higher education in terms of how much it costs and the value from it, how can business schools leverage their expertise in measuring value to reshape this conversation in the public sphere?

[24:04] Phil Baty: For me, it does feel like it has to go back to storytelling. How do we signal the good that we do? I say “we” as in the sector, business schools and the wider university sector. I guess it’s become so transactional and so individualistic. I think a lot of it with business schools, you know, there’s often very high fees attached, obviously in an MBA environment. If you’re paying as a consumer for your education, you have consumer rights, you have consumer demands, you demand certain things, which I think is entirely right and completely appropriate.

But I think what it does is it narrows down the value of what these institutions are to, if you’re not getting that individual their personal gain and their job, at the end, you’re somehow not delivering.

[24:50] Phil Baty: And it sort of ignores the much, much broader social good that universities and business schools do. Business schools won’t be curing cancer at any time soon, but they can actually contribute to rethinking the future of the economy, rethinking the world as we live in it and how it’s led and managed in terms of the corporate world. Even though the media and the consumer approach should be, if, what good does it do for my son or daughter or myself as an executive? It’s a legitimate framing, but it’s such a narrowing of the framing, and it allows those who don’t really like universities or feel universities are too left-leaning—they question received wisdom, they challenge authority, all the things that aren’t very popular in certain domains—gives people an easy stick to beat universities with.

Business schools won’t be curing cancer at any time soon, but they can actually contribute to rethinking the future of the economy, rethinking the world as we live in it and how it’s led and managed in terms of the corporate world.

[25:44] Phil Baty: So I think, for me, it’s storytelling. How do we broaden the framing of what good they do? And it’s more than just the great things they do for individuals; it’s the good they do for society at large. And measuring that’s a challenging thing, but communicating it and telling the story, I think, is something we could all embrace and try harder with.

[26:01] Eileen McAuliffe: Sure, sure. I mean we’ve talked a little bit about storytelling there, and we’ve talked about how media can be a positive partner to business schools and or universities in demonstrating their value proposition. When we look at rankings in that context, it does drive a particular set of behaviors, doesn’t it?

If you focus on business schools, what platforms besides rankings are you personally involved with that could bring about that positive change for business schools, do you think?

[26:36] Phil Baty: Under our portfolio we have Times Higher Ed, which is around 50-odd million people across the world of higher education are consuming our content. They do tend to be people inside the higher ed world. We have Poets&Quants, which, of course, is the business schools, more of a consumer-facing platform for the business school world. And we have Inside Higher Ed. So in terms of content, there’s a risk that we’re preaching to the converted a bit because we only report back to the sector.

But we can report good practice, we can report innovation, we can report these sorts of conversations to help people think harder about communicating to the wider public.

[27:14] Phil Baty: Of course, these events that we run, we’ve got 800 people here in Saudi for the World Academic Summit. We have regional summits and meetings where we, again, try to hammer home, how do we share our sense of purpose with the wider world, what techniques are you using? How can individual universities learn from one another?

We even have a group called the World 100 Reputation Network. It’s just purely the communication heads of universities and business schools who get together purely to talk about, how do we communicate to the public, how do we protect our brands, manage our brands. So for us, it’s about community-building through content, online and digital, and in person.

The one thing I think is the most important platform for me at the moment is, we also run the Education World Forum, which is the largest gathering of education ministers in the world.

[28:02] Phil Baty: So it’s our one chance to get the actual politicians to think about, how do they think about education in a way that delivers the socio and economic needs of the nation, and how do we help them to understand, you know, the positive policy effects of investing in good education and supporting universities to do their thing, and the ROI for taxpayers on, you know, the massive return on investment the taxpayers get if we support good quality business skills in universities.

[28:32] Eileen McAuliffe: Yeah, I mean, that’s wonderful. And just extending it a little bit further in terms of big business—big business, medium, small, entrepreneurship. Why do you think there is this kind of disengagement with higher education from business?

We started to see things like Google and Google University, Deloitte University. We started to see some of the large corps set up their own quasi-universities because they think they can train their young people in a way that makes them more employment-ready for their particular roles that they’ve got, they’ve got a stronger employment pipeline. Do you think the employment pipeline between higher education and the broader business community is broken at this point?

[29:16] Phil Baty: I kind of feel that, you know, of course we need to make sure that there’s a narrowing of the skills gap between what universities teach and what employers want, and we really do need to think hard about what those skills are. But I also think this should be an absolute renaissance for traditional universities because, with the extremely rapid pace of change in technological development, particularly AI, where we literally might be struggling to work out what humanity means in the next decade.

But someone once said to me that universities aren’t there to prepare you for your first job, they’re there to prepare you for all of any job. So any technical skills you will learn on the course could be obsolete very quickly, across multiple fields. And any technical skills you need for the job would need to be taught throughout life. You know, the whole point of reskilling and upskilling.

[30:11] Phil Baty: So the core business school or university degree environment is actually teaching you to think, teaching you how to take a problem on, teaching how to apply research theories to getting to answer, teaching you to fail and deal with failure well, teaching you to dust yourself down and get back up again, teaching you to really think critically about the world you’re in. And those broad skills, they’re not going to get you your first job, but they’re going to prepare you for a lifelong set of changes.

If you want to have the leaders of the future, the problem-solvers of the future, it feels like those old school traditional degrees and postgraduate degrees, they should be having a renaissance because it’s about protecting us from the unknown and getting ready for the unknown.

So again, I think it’s an articulation point that you say, well, we don’t need university because we can get our skills on a bit of AI, a MOOC, or a microcredential. I think that’s fine in terms of your incremental job progression.

[30:53] Phil Baty: But if you want to have the leaders of the future, the problem-solvers of the future, it feels like those old school traditional degrees and postgraduate degrees, they should be having a renaissance because it’s about protecting us from the unknown and getting ready for the unknown.

[31:10] Eileen McAuliffe: I really love that description of renaissance. So I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, I referred to it earlier, the World Economic Forum report, in that it said 59 percent of all of today’s current jobs will be obsolete in less than five years. I mean, that is quite scary. That’s quite a pace of change.

[31:30] Phil Baty: So you’re teaching them to deal with the job they don’t know about yet. It doesn’t exist yet. For me, it feels like it’s a great rallying call for the university to say they’re not actually under threat from microcredentials or learn-on-the-job. They should almost be revived by it. It remains to be seen whether I’m being too optimistic or not.

[31:48] Eileen McAuliffe: I absolutely love your optimism because I think there’s space for all of this together. I think it’s a point around how we structure, how the governance works around it.

Phil, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for sharing your expertise and your views, and it has been truly a rich discussion.

I’m just going to finish off by saying to our listeners, if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow AACSB Pulse on AACSB Insights, Apple, or Spotify. We’ve got more great episodes coming up on the biggest issues shaping global business education today.

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A podcast produced by AACSB International, AACSB Pulse explores current topics impacting global business education—three questions at a time—with business school deans, industry leaders, and other big thinkers of today.

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